Meview of Recent Geological Literature. 345 
used so long in the treasury of the State that finally it was returned to 
the general fund of the State, the total sum thus lost to geological 
science in Michigan being something over sixty-three thousand dollars. 
The same geological board has had charge of the survey during the 
whole of this period, though the personnel changed nearly every year. 
The statement of the board contains several strictures on the negli- 
gence of their predecessors, and laments the dilatory manner in which 
the geological survey has been carried on, but properly assigns the 
cause to the over-burdened and under-paid condition of each of the 
officials who belongs to the board. 
"Should the legislature permit the survey to continue in the future 
as it has in the past, no definite limit can be fixed as to the time when 
the survey will be completed. The members of the board are all such 
ex-offlcio. The governor of the state of Michigan is a hard-AVorked 
official. His duties are many and onerous. The superintendent of 
public instruction has but a meagre salary, and while he receives but 
$1,000 per annum for his services, the State receives from him in the or- 
dinary discharge of his duties several times that amount. There is no 
board in the state, perhaps, upon whom so many varied duties devolve 
as upon the state board of education, and the president of that board, if 
he does his full duty, cannot be expected to spend much time upon any 
other board. The present incumbent of that office has given more than 
six weeks of his time to the survey and has received therefor $45 in per 
diem." 
To remedy the defects pointed out, the board recommend strongly 
that the commissioner of mineral statistics, now an independent officer, 
be made a subordinate officer of the board with instructions, with his 
other duties, to spend his entire time in the service of the board look- 
ing after the property and records of the board, and keeping the board 
informed of the condition of the survey. 
That part of the volume which contains a "Sketch of the geology of 
the iron, gold and copper districts,"" by M. E. Wadsworth, the state 
geologist, possesses the chief scientific interest, as it covers many of the 
prominent unsettled questions of the geology of the crystalline rocks in 
the Northwest. It embraces an abstract of the results attained by the 
Michigan Geological Survey, under the late state geologist, C. E. 
Wright, and by Dr. Wadsworth, and gives a somewhat connected dis- 
cussion of the different formations and of their relations 
Under the term Azoic, which he prefers rather than Archaean, he 
embraces three formations to which he gives local names, viz.. Cascade, 
Republic and Holyoke. The terms Algoukian and Keweenawan find 
no place in this report. These new terms were used by Dr. Wadsworth 
first in 1891, for formations whose unconformable relations had been 
made out by the Michigan survey. 
After the presentation of a rather peculiar general classification of 
rocks,the vicinity of the Volunteer mine is cited as the typical locality at 
which the Cascade formation was named. Here can be seen the three 
Azoic formations plainly exhibiting their inter-nonconformity, sepa- 
